Posted By DP Opinion On October 31, 2012 @ 10:13 am In Uncategorized | No Comments

By Barb RedfordColorado Voices

Parents in Jefferson County all breathed a collective sigh of relief when we received the news that they’d arrested a suspect involved in the murder of Jessica Ridgeway. No longer do we need worry about a dangerous predator on the loose in our neighborhoods. But our relief quickly turned to surprise, shock, and wonder as we learned that the suspect himself was a child — a high school aged student attending college early, at the age of 17, and also a resident of the same neighborhood that Jessica lived in. We’re still not quite sure if we’re safe. We have lots of unanswered questions that don’t have easy answers. The most pressing is “Why would someone so young do something so horrible?”

We’ve been on high alert since Jessica’s abduction and murder. We’ve been living in fear trying to protect our children from becoming the next victim. Now we will worry over how to keep them from becoming the next assailant. We’re looking at everyone with a hint of suspicion including our own neighbors, and the kids next door. Wanting to protect our children, we’re becoming paranoid and that paranoia isn’t doing our kids, or anyone else’s, any favors.

Jefferson County and Colorado both seem to be hotbeds for sensational news stories. Is there something in the air or the water here that creates societal deviants? Parents in this community are trying to understand how a 17 year old could have done this. Wanting to make it make sense, we try to fit it into our own neat little paradigms of how to succeed as parents, trying to find a guaranteed formula for success. We’re searching for a solution; do x, y, and z and our kids will be safe and turn out fine. Otherwise we fear that something will happen again and that it will be even closer to home. However, the evidence in all of these unfortunate Colorado tragedies shows that the place we really need look is inside our own homes. We can start by finding out what our children are doing with their time, knowing who their friends are, and what they’re viewing online and on television.

Most parents that were able responded with heightened security. More children are being dropped off and picked up from school. My son still rides his bike school sometimes, even though it’s right through two neighborhoods where there were attempted kidnappings last year. Those attempts were made by a different kidnapper. My son has a cell phone, friends to walk with and we’ve talked about what to do if someone approaches. I don’t want him to live in fear, afraid to exercise or leave the house without me.

There are lessons we all can learn from every tragedy. The hard thing we parents have to tell our children is that we don’t have all the answers. We may never know why. There is evil in the world that will sometimes be around us and our children. We can protect them by being more involved in their lives, and in their spare time activities, and by making sure they have a network of safety and support that they can lean on. We can teach them to be safe when they’re outside and make sure that they’re not alone. One of the most important lessons to teach is from Emily Alexander’s daughter, who told her mother she knew who had killed Jessica. She passed him a few days later and said, “That’s the guy! That was him!” Her instincts were dead-on. We need to teach our kids to listen to that natural intuition.

We can’t be next to our kids every second of the day — our job as parents is to help them grow to become independent and confident and we can’t do that if we’re teaching them to be afraid. It’s better to be safe than sorry, but perhaps we can teach them how to be safe without having to live in fear.